Leagues

Tightening promotion bands pace long-term engagement. As users climb the ten tiers, fewer of them promote each week: Bronze promotes the top two-thirds (≈67% of the field), Gold the top third (33%), Sapphire the top fifth (23%), Obsidian only the top sixth (17%), and Diamond nobody at all. The bands tighten in two places — sharply at the start (Bronze through Gold) and again at the top (Obsidian into Diamond) — with a long plateau through the middle tiers. New users get fast, frequent wins that keep them coming back through the most fragile period of habit formation. Veterans face scarcity that makes the late-game climb feel earned rather than automatic. That's the engagement curve, and it's tunable: the same mechanic — promote some percentage of the field each week — produces different psychological effects at different stages of the journey, just by changing the percentage.

Demotion makes weekly engagement non-negotiable. Promotion alone would be a one-way ratchet — every week the user either moves up or stays still, and the worst outcome is no change. Adding demotion (the bottom slice of each leaderboard drops a tier) pairs the gain with a real loss. The push to climb works because the alternative is sliding back; the same XP that earns a promotion in week one prevents a demotion in week two. Loss aversion does the heavy lifting: people will work harder to avoid losing status they've earned than to gain status they don't yet have. Standing still isn't a stable option — every week, the user is either climbing or defending, and either choice requires showing up.

No shortcuts means every week matters. Even a runaway performance — top XP, blowout victory — only moves the user up one tier. There's no double-promotion: a Sapphire user who earns four times the second-place finisher's XP doesn't skip Ruby and land in Emerald. The system is engineered against shortcuts. The design implicitly rewards consistency. A user who wins by 100 XP in two consecutive weeks ends up two tiers ahead of a user who wins by 5,000 XP in one week. Every week of engagement counts equally toward the climb, which means there's no week the user can skip — even a future Diamond user has to win each individual contest along the way.

The "League Results" sequence is staged as a major Monday moment. The user can reach "League Results" two ways — directly through the leagues tab, or as part of the post-lesson sequence on Monday — and both paths lead to the same destination: a full-screen celebration of where they finished, who promoted, who demoted. The app gives the moment heavy weight — dedicated screen real estate, animated reveal, ceremony framing built around tier changes. That weight is the message: the system is telling the user *this matters*, and the league is worth competing for. The user leaves the celebration motivated to compete in next week's contest, and the lessons that follow get done with next week's reveal in mind.

Leaderboards are deeply integrated into multiple experiences. When a user advances in their leaderboard position, the post-lesson sequence triggers a celebratory animation — feedback tied directly to the action that earned it. Push notifications fire when standing changes: *"You're out of the top 5 😢. Don't give up!"* when a user falls out of the promotion zone, *"Last chance to get promoted!"* as the cycle nears its close, *"Miller Johnson took your spot…"* when a peer overtakes them. The leaderboard also gets its own dedicated tab in the bottom navigation — prime real estate alongside the lesson path itself, placement that broadcasts how vital the league is to the product. Across all three surfaces, the call is consistent: do another lesson, influence the result.